Authors

Author Resources

Thank you for publishing your article with University of California Press. As your publishing partner, we offer an optional checklist of activities and resources to help your article achieve the greatest reach and impact as possible. Download a printable version of our Author Resources.

Understanding copyright transfer

When your article is accepted for publication into one of the journals we publish, the Press asks you to sign an author agreement, which transfers your copyright to the Regents of the University of California or one of its publishing partners.

The reason we ask you to transfer the copyright is simple:

As the administrator of your article's copyright, the Press ensures through managing the licensing and permissions process, that your scholarship will receive the widest possible distribution among educational audiences, and consequently, the greatest success of engaging in active scholarly discourse.

By comparison, if you were to retain your copyright, your article would be distributed only to those individuals and institutions subscribing to the journal. You would also be responsible for fielding and handling all subsequent inquiries for reproduction, which could potentially include numerous classroom photocopying requests by universities throughout the world, republication requests from publishers, abstracting and indexing requests, and subsidiary rights/content licensing agreement requests from content aggregators and archives.

The transfer of copyright to the Press is largely designed to allow you to focus on your research rather than on the clerical details associated with copyright ownership. The downside to this, as we understand, is not having complete control over the dissemination of your article. However, please be assured that the Press takes administration of your copyright and management of the associated rights very seriously.

Using images, photos, music and other outside content to enhance your article

Before your article goes to press, you must clear the necessary reproduction rights for any images, photos, figures, music, or content credited to a third party that you wish to use (including content found on the Internet), which fall outside of the fair use provisions described in U.S. copyright law. Because University of California Press distributes and licenses your article widely to libraries, journal subscribers, secondary publishers, and other educational organizations, we request that our authors seek nonexclusive, worldwide rights in all formats and media, for one-time use from the rights holder of the image, photo, musical score, etc. that you wish to reprint. Once you have secured formal permission, please provide your journal's editor with all correspondence and supporting documentation for his/her records. If you have questions regarding how to obtain permission for such third-party content, please find a brief list of reference websites and resources that will help you not only to license content easily and efficiently, but also to navigate the complex world of fair use, public domain, and copyright law:

Posting articles to institutional or subject repositories

In response to the evolving nature of scholarly exchange and collaboration, University of California Press allows its authors to post preprints and postprints on authors' personal websites, and within institutional repositories.

Posting requirements:

To deter misuse of your article and to ensure citation consistency when posting preprints and postprints, we kindly ask that you adhere to the following requirements:

Preprints: If you deposit an unedited "working paper" or preprint to a website, you must clearly state on the site that your article has been accepted for publication in [your journal's name] and note where and when it will be published.

Postprints: Once your article is published, you must remove the preprint from the site and replace it with a postprint. You may use the Publisher-generated PDF, and you must display the following Publisher's Statement in tandem with posting:

Funding-body archives: For deposits to PubMed Central and other funding-body archives, please be aware that University of California Press asks that you post no sooner than 6 months after final publication.

Discounts on UC Press journals

As a contributor to one of our journals, you are entitled to purchase the issue in which your article appears at a discount of 50% off the list price. To take advantage of this discount, enter the discount code "AUTHOR" at checkout.